Our recent conference was another great day of learning and sharing. With support from Nesta (funded by the Heritage and Big Lottery Funds), Horticulture Week and Glendale, we were able to present a day that allowed delegates to have one to one discussions with the leaders of some ground-breaking parks projects from around the country.The day began with a welcome from Councillor Radice to Bristol the European Green Capital for 2105 who shared some of the parks-based projects that have been happening across the city. She was followed by the keynote speaker Mark Camley, Head of Parks and Venues at the London Legacy Development Corporation and Chairman of the Parks Alliance.Mark, who was previously Head of the Royal Parks, shared his experiences of making the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park financially sustainable, demonstrating how this is relevant to smaller sites and also his views on the challenges of innovation in parks management. He set the scene for a fascinating day.Mark was followed by Lydia Rangoonanan from Nesta who introduced the topic for the day: innovation in parks management and the Rethinking Parks programme which is supported by the Big Lottery Fund (England), Heritage Lottery Fund and Nesta to enable eleven pilot projects to test new business models for public parks. These projects are trying-out new techniques of management with a view to finding ways to secure the future of parks including changes to maintenance and planting, finding ways to generate income and working to encourage donations from the public. Delegates spent the remainder of the day in workshops with the leaders of five of the projects hearing about the approaches they are trying and the issues they are addressing .

The presentations from the conference are here:

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